What does it feel like to fight for someone else’s land, which has been occupied by their enemy, while your homeland is under occupation? What is the logic and motive behind this decision?
Kavsar Kurash turns 24 this year. He and his mother are US residents. He left the US four years ago to attend college in Sweden. He applied to enlist with the foreigners fighting for Ukraine when the war began.
He said that he might not be able to do too much for them, but he could do great things for himself: He could put his conscience to rest, and sleep peacefully at night.
Kurash was refused because of his lack of military experience. He went anyway, and arrived in the Ukrainian city of Lviv on April 1, with the idea that “if I can carry a wounded man out of a building that explodes or I can carry a bowl of food to a refugee, that is enough.”
Distributing foreign aid was a major daily task for him.
To know the real reason of Kavsar’s journey of Ukraine, I called the boy myself, as a family friend.
“Of course, we do support you to help others, but in international affairs, we Uighurs are not obliged to do so,” I said, trying to remind him of his motherland.
He responded that, since the Uighurs are a people waiting for help from the international community, if Uighurs help people who share the same destiny, help will come from God if it does not come from within or from the international community.
I asked him whether he knew that there are people in the world in an even worse situation than the Ukrainians are in.
“Of course,” he said, “but this is the only available zone I can reach today, so I decided to come to Ukraine, which is in a similar situation to that of East Turkestan.”
When I said that Russia is a neighbor of the Uighurs, and that there were historical and political ties between them, he said: “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin is an ally of [Chinese President] Xi Jinping (習近平), his win is Xi Jinping’s win. It may encourage Xi Jinping to shed more blood in East Turkestan and Taiwan, so I think I’m not on the wrong side.”
Neither I nor his mother could change his mind. He stayed four days longer than his original plan and returned to Sweden safely on April 25.
“I couldn’t do anything to be proud of,” he said on the telephone from Stockholm. “All I could do was let somewhere between 10 and 100 Ukrainians know that they were not alone in this war.”
We asked him whether he had compared the Ukrainians’ situation to that of Uighurs while he was there, to which he replied that the fundamental difference is that they have the chance to die with honor in the war, which is incomparable to the situation of millions of Uighurs disappearing and being held in jails and labor camps.
He said he believed and hoped that if Uighurs in the concentration camps could hear of his presence in Ukraine, they would hopefully believe that, when the time comes, they will have sons and daughters willing to sacrifice their lives for them.
When he made this point, I discovered that he had more reasons for helping Uighurs than Ukrainians to support his presence on the Ukrainian battlefield.
So I congratulated the family for their son’s journey to Ukraine: By heading to a war zone, Kavsar Kurash has already tested his courage to fight for freedom, and demonstrated his devotion to his motherland and humanity.
As I posted this congratulatory message on my Facebook page, I received a number of weighty questions:
What about the Uighur fighters in Syria and Afghanistan? They have said that they were there for military training and to strengthen themselves against China. Do they not deserve praise, as Kavsar did?
They are also people fighting for two countries on one battlefield — those who wanted to achieve the ideals that Kavsar wanted to achieve. They are paying a heavy price for their ideals, looking for ways out of desperation, not going astray when they are alone or marginalized; they are not only a symbol of heroism, they are also example of victims of the international system.
Kok Bayraq is a Uighur American.
Denmark has consistently defended Greenland in light of US President Donald Trump’s interests and has provided unwavering support to Ukraine during its war with Russia. Denmark can be proud of its clear support for peoples’ democratic right to determine their own future. However, this democratic ideal completely falls apart when it comes to Taiwan — and it raises important questions about Denmark’s commitment to supporting democracies. Taiwan lives under daily military threats from China, which seeks to take over Taiwan, by force if necessary — an annexation that only a very small minority in Taiwan supports. Denmark has given China a
Speaking at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit on May 13, former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said that democracies must remain united and that “Taiwan’s security is essential to regional stability and to defending democratic values amid mounting authoritarianism.” Earlier that day, Tsai had met with a group of Danish parliamentarians led by Danish Parliament Speaker Pia Kjaersgaard, who has visited Taiwan many times, most recently in November last year, when she met with President William Lai (賴清德) at the Presidential Office. Kjaersgaard had told Lai: “I can assure you that ... you can count on us. You can count on our support
Many local news media over the past week have reported on Internet personality Holger Chen’s (陳之漢) first visit to China between Tuesday last week and yesterday, as remarks he made during a live stream have sparked wide discussions and strong criticism across the Taiwan Strait. Chen, better known as Kuan Chang (館長), is a former gang member turned fitness celebrity and businessman. He is known for his live streams, which are full of foul-mouthed and hypermasculine commentary. He had previously spoken out against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and criticized Taiwanese who “enjoy the freedom in Taiwan, but want China’s money”
Last month, two major diplomatic events unfolded in Southeast Asia that suggested subtle shifts in the region’s strategic landscape. The 46th ASEAN Summit and the inaugural ASEAN-Gulf-Cooperation Council (GCC)-China Trilateral Summit in Kuala Lumpur coincided with French President Emmanuel Macron’s high-profile visits to Vietnam, Indonesia and Singapore. Together, they highlighted ASEAN’s maturing global posture, deepening regional integration and China’s intensifying efforts to recalibrate its economic diplomacy amid uncertainties posed by the US. The ASEAN summit took place amid rising protectionist policies from the US, notably sweeping tariffs on goods from Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, with duties as high as 49 percent.
RSS